If you happened to have just seen another Wenn Deramas movie, trust me, “Beauty and the Bestie” barely bears any difference. Not saying that’s completely a bad thing, Deramas’ form of comic entertainment has been delivering massive impact to the slapstick comedy-inclined audience who easily find brittle laughters from familiar spoofs and parodies in Deramas films, in the past decade. If you are into that fold, this film is no short of recommendation.
The film follows estranged bestfriends, Eric/Erica (Vice Ganda) and Emman (Coco Martin). They are reunited when the latter seeks the help of the former, in connection to his job as a secret agent. When Natalya (also played by Vice Ganda), daughter of Uzekoslovakia’s head of state, got kidnapped, Emman has to ask Eric (who looks exactly as Natalya) to pretend to be the uzekoslovakian, or else the national security might get into great peril.
The disguise involves joining the Miss Uniworld beauty pageant in which Natalya is defaultly representing her country, but Eric would only accept if the agency agrees to provide his conditions, which mostly involve providing the needs of his family.
The film hardly weaves a solid storyline, but if its only intention is to provide relentless comedy, then it surely does an excellent job. It is not short of charm, courtesy of the two child stars, Alonzo Mulach and Marco Masa, and it brims with teenage kilig (the fanboys and girls will definitely look forward to this) coming from James Reid and Nadine Lustre.
But arguably, the film’s greatest strength emanates from the unlikely tandem of Vice Ganda and Coco Martin, their surprisingly effective comic chemistry, resulting to a palatable end product, even with the horrible material they are handed with.
This works even when the film itself is rushing toward a poorly-executed climax, that does not bear any significant improvement from the previous confrontations. It falls flat at such department, but it quickly returns hitting its aims when it again delivers solid comic efforts.
“Beauty and the Bestie” does not probably need even a half hour to meet its intentions. Right at its first minute, it sends the entire theater into exploding laughter, and it never stops from there, even at moments when the script takes brief turns of absurdly forced manipulative dramas.
There is no doubt the Deramas-Vice Ganda formula is working again.
RATING: 6/10 (JE)
“Beauty and the Bestie” is an official entry to the Metro Manila Film Festival.
